20 LEAVES FROM THE 



in order, no doubt, to balance the fact of a ben batching 

 a condor. 



A sohtary male bnzzard in our time made desperate 

 love to the shoe of the gardener of the Physic Garden at 

 Oxford, with the gardener's foot in the said shoe; but 

 Mr. Yarrell's story relates to the gentler sex, and he 

 l^refaces it with an observation as to the extreme par- 

 tiahty of the common buzzard for the seasonal task of 

 incubation and rearing young birds. 



The bird mentioned by Mr. Yarrell was kept in the 

 garden of the Chequers, in the good town of Uxbridge, 

 of ineffectual Treaty memory. The poor bird — she was 

 well known to many a brother of the angle, ' now," as old 

 Izaak hath it, 'with God' — manifested her inclination to 

 frame a nest by gathering and twisting about all the 

 loose sticks she could lay beak and claw on. The good 

 master of the house had compassion on her, furnished 

 her with twigs and all appliances and means to boot, 

 and the solitary creature went to work and completed a 

 nest. Two hens' eggs were put under her; she hatched 

 them well and reared them bravely. Her desire to sit 

 was indicated by scratching holes in the garden, and 

 breaking and tearing everything within reach of beak 

 and talons. Year after year did she hatch and bring up 

 a goodly troop of chickens, and in 1831 her brood con- 

 sisted of nine, after the loss of one, for she had brought 

 out ten. Upon one occasion her kind master, to save 

 her from what he thought the ennui of sitting, put down 

 to her a nev/ly-hatched lot — luckless little ones, she 

 destroyed every chick of them. The good man did not 

 know the animal economy, which makes the application 

 of the eo-jTs to the inflamed breast of the female bird a 

 balm, rendering this labour of love twice blessed, and 

 leading in its train all the ma.temal charities. The 

 ready-made nestlings were treated as intruding impostors ; 

 but to her own foster-chicks no honest barn-door chuckle 



